Theodor Scherer-Boccard

Theodor Scherer-Boccard in 1874

Theodor, Count von Scherer-Boccard (12 May 1816 – 6 February 1885) was a Swiss journalist, publisher and politician.

Biography

Early life and education

Theodor Scherer was born into an old, wealthy family at Dornach in the canton of Solothurn. His father Franz Philipp Scherer was a Solothurn councillor and chief bailiff of Dorneck-Thierstein. As such, he resided in the Amtshaus or "Schlosshof" in the Dornach district of Dornachbrugg, which thus became Theodor Scherer's birthplace. Scherer's mother Maria Rosa came from the originally French glazier family Gressly, which had emigrated to Switzerland as a result of the French Revolution. She was a niece of the geologist Amanz Gressly. Both parents were intensely practicing Catholics.

In his biography of Scherer, the clergyman Johann Georg Mayer describes the father as a close friend of the Mariastein abbot Placidus Ackermann and portrays the mother as a woman who frequently made pilgrimages to Mariastein with her children, where she declared that she "would rather lose her children for eternity by an early death, now in their innocence, than later by a sinful life. Theodor's older brother Franz died of scarlet fever at the age of twelve. Subsequently, the family moved their residence from Dornach first to Olten, later to Solothurn, where Scherer's sister Virginie was born. In Solothurn, Theodor Scherer attended the Gymnasium and the adjoining Lyceum. He continued his studies with the Jesuits in Freiburg im Breisgau. Although he was also attracted to the priesthood, he eventually followed a secular path in life. Scherer's worldview is described by historian Peter Stadler as "fixed at an early age."

Professional and journalistic beginnings

In 1836, Scherer planned to study law with stays in Munich and Paris, but instead returned to Solothurn to support his father, who was ill. There, at only twenty years of age, he founded the first conservative newspaper in the canton, the Schildwache am Jura, which "as a conservative paper of aggressive tone soon caused problems for the Solothurn government," as Stadler wrote in his study of the Kulturkampf in Switzerland. On February 27, 1837, Scherer was elected to the Grand Council of the Canton of Solothurn in the "collegiate elections" (indirect election by electoral college), of which he was a member until 1841. During this time he ran a political "Correspondence Bureau," with which he established connections to Catholic and Protestant conservative forces both in Switzerland and abroad.

Constitutional dispute and consequences

The liberal Solothurn constitution of 1831, which followed representative-democratic principles, allowed a revision only after ten years had elapsed. Such a revision was generally expected in 1841, since popular rights were still relatively weak in the 1831 constitution. As in other cantons (Bern, Zürich, Lucerne, and Aargau), unrest increased in the canton of Solothurn as the revision approached.

The conservative-catholic opposition, to which Scherer belonged, now saw the old liberal party, which had ended the rule of the Solothurn patriciate at the end of 1830, as a "persistent element," while the liberals were suspicious of the conservative demands for autonomy of the communes and for direct elections. According to Mayer, the so-called "people's veto" was "proposed and defended by Scherer." After a constitution along the lines of the government — without the people's veto — had been adopted in the Solothurn Grand Council on December 19, 1840, the conflict came to a head before the referendum on the constitution scheduled for January 10, 1841.

While Scherer and the radical liberal Urs Joseph Hammer had argued that a new constitution should be drawn up in the event of rejection, the Grand Council decided that in this case the old constitution should remain in force for another ten years. Thus the opposition had only the choice between the old constitution and what they considered an inadequate new constitution. This led to leaflet campaigns against the draft constitution and against the government.

On January 2, 1841, leading men of the revisionist movement met in Mümliswil and signed an appeal to the people of Solothurn to reject the constitution. Scherer's signature was the third after that of councilor Leonz Gugger and councillor Friedrich Glutz von Blotzheim. Subsequently, rumors of a putsch increased. However, before the Mümliswil appeal, the "Mümliswiler address", could be widely distributed, the government struck and had leading figures of the opposition arrested on January 5 and 6, 1841, among them Scherer. It had the "Schildwache" and the correspondence bureau closed by the police and charged the imprisoned Scherer with high treason. In the referendum of January 10, the constitution was accepted.

Scherer and other leading figures of the opposition were able to leave prison for the time being after several months in order to participate in the constituent assembly of the Great Council, to which they had been re-elected. Scherer, who had fallen ill, subsequently went to the Birstal for a convalescent stay, where news reached him that he was threatened with renewed arrest. If he was convicted as a traitor, he could be sentenced to life in chains or even the death penalty. As a result, Scherer fled to France via Basel and stayed in Paris. Meanwhile, a conservative government had come to power in the canton of Lucerne, which now wanted to create a Catholic newspaper and invited Scherer to Lucerne as its director for this purpose. Scherer followed this call, went to Lucerne, and there, together with others, founded the Staatszeitung der katholischen Schweiz. On April 11, 1843, the University of Würzburg awarded him the title of Doctor of Both Laws for his work Revoluzion und Restaurazion der Staatswissenschaft. Scherer's work was published in the same year.

On June 23, 1843, Scherer and his ten co-defendants were sentenced in Solothurn. The prosecutor had demanded the death penalty for all the defendants. The court, however, declared the trial to be "only of a police nature," after which Scherer was sentenced to 11 months in state prison. The other defendants also received similar prison sentences. Scherer left Lucerne in November 1843 to begin his prison term in Solothurn; according to Johann Georg Mayer, because his father, who was again ill, had requested Scherer's return to Solothurn. The father then also obtained Scherer's release by petition as early as February 28, 1844. Scherer was released from prison in November 1843.

Until his father's death on December 14, 1844, Scherer remained with his family in Solothurn, where he was also in close contact with the conservative constitutional lawyer Karl Ludwig von Haller, who became his "mentor and donor of ideas." Scherer's father was a member of the Swiss government. Afterwards, at the invitation of the Lucerne government councilor Constantin Siegwart-Müller, he moved with his mother and sister to Lucerne, where he took a position as Siegwart-Müller's cabinet secretary. During the Sonderbund period, Scherer was entrusted with the diplomatic correspondence of Siegwart-Müller, who chaired the Sonderbund's War council. In addition, he was a reporter for the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung for Catholic Switzerland during the Sonderbund period; his articles for this newspaper were marked with † or ††.

After the Sonderbund War

Country residence Hünenberg

The victory of the liberal cantons in the Sonderbund War ended the political careers of both Siegwart-Müller and Scherer. Scherer, his mother and his sister moved back to Solothurn. He now concentrated entirely on his journalistic work, especially as editor of the Schweizerische Kirchenzeitung (1855-1880). Scherer fundamentally rejected the political conditions in Switzerland after 1848 — Peter Stadler suspects that this also contributed to the fact that he no longer participate in an active political career and did not run in any parliamentary elections.

In any case, his attitude of placing himself in the service of the church while renouncing a political career was in line with a general tendency of Catholics loyal to Rome in the course of the 19th century, according to Alois Steiner in the Zeitschrift für Schweizerische Kirchengeschichte.

After a trip to Rome, Pope Pius IX appointed Scherer a Roman Count on May 18, 1852. In 1855, he acquired the castle of Hünenberg in the municipality of Ebikon near Lucerne, where he lived initially in the summer and from 1864 year-round. Scherer was a co-founder of a number of Catholic organizations, such as the Swiss Piusverein in 1857, as whose president he subsequently served until his death. Scherer's mother died in 1859. In 1868, he married Marie Louise de Boccard, who came from a patrician family of the city of Freiburg im Üechtland, and since then called himself Scherer-Boccard. The marriage remained childless.

In 1874, Scherer-Boccard was involved in the first attempt to found an all-Swiss Catholic conservative party, which, however, remained unsuccessful. According to Scherer-Boccard's remarks, which are described by historian Urs Altermatt as "groundbreaking", the party to be founded would already have acquired the character of a people's party on a democratic basis. However, the founding of a Conservative People's Party, today's Christian Democratic People's Party of Switzerland (CVP), ultimately did not take place until 1912. During Scherer's lifetime, the founding of the party was opposed by old conservative groups in the Catholic conservative camp, according to whom a federal party would have disrupted the ability of the parliamentary group to act.

In the years before his death, Scherer-Boccard lived mainly at his propriety in Ebikon. From the end of December 1884, however, he stayed at his Solothurn home, where he suffered a cerebral stroke, the consequences of which he succumbed to on February 6, 1885. He was buried at Ingenbohl in the canton of Schwyz.

Works

Scherer-Boccard issued 35 separate publications, containing apologetic, biographical, or historical matter. They included:

• Revolution und Restauration der Staatswissenschaft (Augsburg and Lucerne, 1842; 2nd ed., 1845)
• Die fünfzehnjahrige Fehde der Revolution gegen die katholische Schweiz 1830-45 (Lucerne, 1846)
• Das Verhältniss zwischen Kirche und Staat (Ratisbon, 1846; 2nd ed., 1854)
• Die Reformbewegung unserer Zeit und das Christenthum (Augsburg, 1848)
• Der heilige Vater. Betrachtungen über die Mission und die Verdienste des Papstthums (Munich, 1850)
• Heidenthum und Christenthum betrachtet in den Monumenten des alten und neuen Roms (Schaffhausen, 1853; 2nd ed., 1880)
• Lebensbilder aus der Gesellschaft Jesu. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der katholischen Restauration (Schaffhausen, 1854)

He was also one of the editors of the Archiv für schweizerische Reformationsgeschichte (3 vols., Fribourg, 1869–75).

Notes

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:  The entry cites:
  • Mayer, Graf Theodor Scherer-Boccard. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der katholischen Bewegung in der Schweiz (Einsiedeln, 1900), with portrait.

External links

• Theodor Scherer
• Theodor Scherer
• Theodore, Count von Scherer-Boccard